


Never Say We Die

by jane_potter



Series: The Riotverse [6]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Graphic Sexual Content, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attack, Rape References, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-11
Updated: 2010-09-11
Packaged: 2017-10-11 16:22:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/114309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_potter/pseuds/jane_potter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a drawback to being as self-aware and brutally honed to perfection as Hikaru Sulu is: when he breaks, he doesn't know how to fix himself. It doesn't make sense that someone as broken as Jim Kirk should be the one to help him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Say We Die

It wasn't working.

Sulu's hand was trembling against the armrest of his chair, the click of his nails easily audible on the deserted bridge. To disguise it, he started to deliberately tap his fingertips against the panel. It didn't stop the shaking, but it made him feel marginally more in control. Disturbed by his own jitteriness, Sulu glanced around the bridge.

Empty. The overhead lights had been turned off, as was usual on gamma shift. Never could conserve enough power as far as Chief Engineer Balu was concerned. The rest of the stations were unmanned, their functions set to standby. All lights flared passive green. On Sulu's console, the autopilot controls had been engaged and the coordinates were locked in. All around him, the normally bustling bridge was eerily quiet; none of McKenna's instruments were pinging and even the ordinary beeping of minor warning alarms had been silenced. All Sulu could hear was the _Number One_'s engines humming along at warp 3.6 and his own raspy breathing.

Dull red pain throbbed in Sulu's skull, just behind his left eye. In _front _of his left eye, rather. Above and below it, as well. Beneath the medifoil McCoy had applied to hold his split cheek together, Sulu's skin felt tight with healing itch. His brow, where he had actually taken most of the damage-- where the _bat'leth_'s tip had scored right through his skull--

Well, he couldn't feel that part of the wound. Brain tissue had no nerve endings.

Cautiously, Sulu's reached up and explored the damage with his fingertips. As if in a dream, he touched the medifoil taped almost at his hairline, and ran his fingers down-- down, over his forehead and browbone, over the eyepatch McCoy had gruffly tied on, over the foil that extended almost all the way to the corner of his mouth.

The left side of his face still felt too fat, slightly clumsy, but the numbness was receding. McCoy had administered anaesthetic prior to the surgery (though Sulu had been rather too busy bleeding from his gaping skull wound to protest or even remember that) and then again afterwards, and once more just before releasing Sulu from sickbay, though everything in Sulu's monastic training had protested. Pain was a warning, a sign that you were doing something wrong, and it had to be felt in order to be heeded, had to be endured in order to be learned from.

'Yeah, yeah,' McCoy had said, and jabbed the hypospray full of drugs into Sulu's shoulder. 'Tell me that when I _haven't_ just spent four hours putting your brain back inside your skull.'

A hard, sick lump formed in Sulu's throat.

He drew a long, slow breath, reminding himself once again that McCoy had been exaggerating. Jim had been there, Jim had been conscious while Sulu had apparently been a nonverbal zombie staggering back onto the ship, and Jim had assured him that his brain had been 'barely showing at all'.

Abruptly, Sulu tapped a quick sequence of commands into his console. The autopilot light flashed off. After few more keystrokes and a password, he had turned off all the automatic stabilisers, as well as the navigation program that the _One_'s destination coordinates had been entered into. Manual controls popped out of the console. The computer gave him the usual five second countdown to relinquishing complete control. Sulu's hand was already on the throttle.

The transition was seamless, not even a shiver running through the deck as the onboard navigation computers shut off entirely and Sulu took over. Slowly, he nudged the ship up to warp factor 4. A delicate shift of his right wrist eased the _One_ into a smooth curve around a dense cloud of space dust that glowed bright blue on the sensors.

Sulu kept his eyes fixed on the bridge's viewscreen, watching the stars flare past the power he held beneath his fingertips. He flew for several minutes, guiding the ship through a series of arcs and curves that would have made an eagle jealous. The deck below his feet thrummed almost below the range of his hearing, and for a moment Sulu thought he understood what Jim was always going on about-- how the ship _sang_.

_Like a bow_, Sulu thought, recalling the sharp _crack_ of a waxed string rebounding against his gloved wrist as the arrow leaped into the air, the whine of an arrow in flight, the thrum of the string quivering in the aftermath. Whenever Captain Pike said _punch it_, Sulu thought _ikakero_ and opened the throttle on his exhale.

A bare nudge of the throttle pushed the ship up to warp 4.1 exactly as they glided into the gravitational well of the nearest planetoid. Sulu inhaled-- and a curl of his wrist sent the _One_ slingshotting beautifully from the well at the apogee of her arc. He eased the engines back down but the ship carried on at warp 4 exactly, propelled by momentum. The hairs on the back of Sulu's neck stood on end.

But it wasn't _working_. Clenched around the throttle, his hand was still trembling.

Sulu let out a shaky breath. Moving too jerkily, he turned the stabilisers back on. The manual controls were jerked from his nerveless hands and retracted into the console.

_Engage autopilot_? the computer asked. Sulu hit _Yes_ and dropped his palms down flat to his thighs, ironing creases from his pants. The snag of his hard calluses on the too-thin polyester only served to remind him that he was wearing medical scrubs.

His arms, his shoulders-- his entire body was quivering.

"Little bit of late night joyriding?"

Sulu managed not to flinch, but only just. His shoulders grew even tenser. "Yeah."

Jim sauntered onto the bridge, toying with a thin datasolid case in his hands. It was halfway through gamma shift, what Sulu knew damn well was the middle of Jim's night, but Jim was still wearing his jeans and boots. The stretched-out tanktop beneath his jacket might have been what passed for sleepwear on a ship full of people who were presently too poor to own more than two pairs of pants each, but given the _One_'s extremely lax dress code it just as well might not have been.

"Your eye doing okay, then? Surprised McCoy let you out of his lair so soon."

Jim was on his blind side, in the void, but Sulu refused to turn his body to look. Still, he would have bet his good katana that Jim's eyes were fixed hard on the way Sulu had to still himself from touching the eyepatch reflexively. Nausea rolling in his stomach, Sulu dropped his hand back to his lap.

"It's just babysitting. We're in transit."

Jim strolled around into his line of sight, flopped into the command chair and kicked it into a spin. "Still. You're on gamma rotation now?"

Sulu adjusted a coolant flow knob, recalling how the port plasma conduits always ran a little hot, and didn't look at Jim. "Might as well be, seeing as the surgery threw off my sleep cycle."

"Awesome." Sulu heard the sole of Jim's boot skid abruptly across the deck, bringing the spinning chair to a halt. A moment later Jim was draped across the back of Sulu's chair, the datasolid case thrust in front of his face. "Look what I brought."

Sulu's single eye fought to focus. "What? No."

Jim was already on the other side of the bridge. He unlocked the communications console and punched a few buttons. The viewscreen polarised, then blanked. Whistling through the gap between his front teeth-- knocked newly crooked by the same Klingon that had hewed Sulu's face open-- Jim slipped the datasolid into a slot on the console.

A title sequence started to play on the main viewscreen.

Sulu stared. "You did not just hack the bridge screen."

"Naw." Jim flashed him a wide smile, displaying every scab-black cut on his swollen lips and the chip missing from his left incisor. "Did it three months ago. And it's not a hack, just... creative rewiring."

"I'm telling Uhura you touched her console."

Jim gasped theatrically and flung himself backwards over the console with one hand pressed over his heart, his spine bending up in a supple arch. It would have been sexy if Sulu didn't remember the last time he'd seen Jim in practically the same position over a bar table, three ribs cracked and his face a mess of blood and broken cartilege. Maybe Jim remembered, too-- his upside-down smile was tight and razor-edged.

"You fucking _wound_ me, guy."

"You've been watching nostalgia vids," Sulu accused. Jim snorted and rolled off the console. "You've been watching nostalgia vids _without_ me," he rephrased.

Jim's slink back over to Sulu's console was loose-hipped and predatory. "We're watching one now."

Sulu absolutely did not dart a glance at the film playing onscreen. "Jim, I'm on shift. On the _bridge_."

"Oh my god, _stop_," Jim muttered. The phrase was _archaic_, older than 'peshwa' and 'socky' and even 'that's so sublight!' Between McCoy and Jim, there was a higher concentration of people who talked about God on the _Number One_ than those that Sulu had ever met in his _life_ before signing on with Captain Pike. "Look, I even put a safeguard program in. If any of the sensors pick up anything out of the ordinary, the vid automatically shuts off and normal screen functions resume. You think I'd put my girl in danger?"

He grabbed Sulu's arm and tried to pull Sulu from his chair. Every muscle in his body locked as tight as steel hawsers, Sulu didn't move an inch.

Jim glared. Sulu stared blandly back, smooth faced. There were reasons nobody ever tried to push him around, even in play.

Jim huffed and dropped Sulu's arm. He shoved his hand into the waistband of his jeans, saying, "Fine, maybe you'll like--"

"If you pull out your, dick, I'm cutting it off."

"--these," Jim finished, holding up a bright green vacuum-sealed package.

Sulu's resolved snapped. It wasn't until the freeze dried peas were in his hands, however, that he let Jim pull him to his feet. "Where did you get these?" Sulu asked wonderingly. They were his _brand_, too. Having spent two fruitless years searching for them in every order catalogue he could find, he knew damn well that they weren't sold anywhere but Earth. "Jim, these--"

"Yeah yeah yeah, cost me a fucking fortune, did it just for you, blah blah selfless friendship I deserve medals and blowjobs and shit."

"No. Where are you--?"

"Sit."

Sulu resisted. "But it's the command chair."

Jim shot him a look of disgust. "Um, yeah? Chris doesn't give a shit, I sit here all the time."

"You're the first officer, and he's your father."

"And it's the best seat in the house, sit down and watch your fucking vid." Jim kicked his ankle none too gently.

After eighteen months and twenty-six brawls on the _Number One_'s payroll, Sulu knew Jim well enough to tell when he was getting genuinely pissed off. Jim might have been a genius but he was was no more emotionally opaque than any other hard-running spacer; when he lost patience it was as obvious as watching a rope fray.

Sulu sat. He shifted around for the first few moments, trying to get past the awkwardness of sitting in a seat that somebody else had obviously owned for so long that there were marks well worn into the cushion. It was comfortable, no question-- it just wasn't _his_. Captain Pike's thigh creases didn't fit Sulu's normal posture any more than they did Jim's, who spent _his_ shifts with the con sprawled sideways to fill up the whole chair. Eventually, Sulu simply drew his legs up into their usual folded lotus and leaned back into the chair, noting 1) good lumbar support, and 2) much more spacious than his seat at the pilot's console.

He was not expecting, however, that Jim would promptly flop down on top of him. Without warning-- and _damn_ Jim for coming from his blind side-- Sulu had a lap full of gawky teenage man. He swore as Jim's weight ground his anklebones together.

"_Ouch_," hissed Sulu, and made to flip Jim right onto the deck, only to find that Jim had a leg hooked over the arm of the chair and a tight fistful of his shirt collar that would drag Sulu right down with him. For what was definitely not the first time since meeting Jim, Sulu had to tell himself to stop, take a breath, push the pain under control (step optional but usually required), and say very calmly, "Jim?"

"'Sup."

"My knees aren't really meant to take your weight in this position. _Batwa_: this _hurts_."

"Don't sit like a dork, then." Jim made a shimmying wriggle that settled his ass more firmly into Sulu's lap and sent further jolts of pain through Sulu's protesting joints.  
"Off," Sulu gritted out, shoving his legs out of the lotus.

Jim nearly tumbled onto the deck, yelping, "Okay, _fuck_, Sulu."

A little while later found Sulu grudgingly settled into a looser sprawl to the chair's left, while Jim had draped himself across Sulu's lap and the right arm rest, both legs hooked over the left. Sulu made sure to tap in the safety lock on the chair's controls. The last thing he wanted was to accidentally engage the shipwide comm or fire a torpedo or something else stupid that would probably happen if Jim was left directly in charge.

"Will you shut the fuck up now?" Jim asked irritably. "Look, you missed all the beginning. Now I have to run it back."

"Never mind," Sulu said. "I've seen it before, you know. Pretty sure you were there, in fact."

Jim sneered. Seated to Sulu's right, he was perfectly visible in periphery. Sulu's fingers twitched anxiously. It was impossible to ignore, even for a second, the black void that was his left eye, taped shut and covered blind so that his eyelid could heal back together properly.

'It's gonna scar, but you don't want it to be gimpy, too,' McCoy had said.

Needing to occupy himself with something, Sulu fumbled for the bag of freeze dried peas. He drew the menial knife from his sleeve in one swift motion that Jim's hawkish eyes followed automatically. Sulu felt Jim's body tense on top of his thighs but said nothing, mostly because he, Sulu, tensed every time Jim put a hand to his phaser, even just to readjust the holster. It came with the territory.

The two-inch blade slit the packaging with lethal precision even though Sulu was painfully aware that his hands were still _shaking_. Almost the moment he had poured a couple of dehydrated peas into his palm, he became aware that he wasn't hungry-- if anything, the sight of food made him even more nauseous.

His mouth as dry as plastboard, Sulu forced himself to chew and swallow a couple bites. The food sat like lead shot in his rolling stomach. He looked fixedly at the screen. Jim looked at _him_, too critical, too sharp to fool.

Sulu wasn't an idiot-- he knew when to pick his battles. Jim probably had the empath rating of a Betazoid, and knowledge of body language to go with it that made him both a brilliant XO and a brutally dangerous opponent. Jim got inside people's _heads_ when they gave him half a chance, and he could fix their problems as easily as fuck them up sideways. Sulu had seen it before, time after time: Uhura, McCoy, Gaila... The way Jim had sunk his claws into McCoy-- for the better, yes, but still...

No, Sulu had no intention of giving Jim the in.

"How do you _like_ this shit?" Jim asked half an hour later, staring at the screen with slightly glassy eyes. Sulu twitched, annoyed that Jim had somehow managed to speak right over top of one of his favourite lines.

"This is a classic."

"Your sword is a classic. This is antique."

"You collect _paper_ books," Sulu retorted irritably.

"It's a cash sink," Jim snapped back. "I sell 'em when we need emergency money. My second edition of _Pride and Prejudice_ bought the new replicator coils, thank you very much, so think about that next time you have coffee that doesn't taste like chalk."

"What_ever_."

Jim wrinkled his nose. "You... _geek_. Holy fuck, he just got shot in the head. I thought he was a main character, Sulu, why is he shot in the head?"

"I hate watching vids with you, you never wait and see." Sulu gestured at the screen as the camera panned over to reveal the shooter. As he recalled the scene very well, Sulu was far more interested in the character's flintlock pistol than the questionable script. Twenty-first century films had an inescapable tendency to sprawl out of control in their sequels, in an equation where the level of bullshit was directly proportional to the number of sequels.

Still-- pirates and pistols and buckles that swashed. There was a reason, after all, that sequels had always been made.

"...The fuck. I don't remember this part."

"Shut up and watch it, then."

"Now I want peanuts. Do you want peanuts?"

Why was it not worth it to roll his eyes again? Sulu did it automatically, and remembered the reason when his left eye seared with sudden shooting agony. He shuddered and sat still until the pain faded to a more manageable level, but a red throb had started up in his skull and refused to go away. "Not really. Jim, fuck. There's not even peanut _butter_ in the galley, don't bother. No, wait-- go ahead and leave."

"Fuck you."

"No."

"...That's a lot of crabs."

"I hate you so much," Sulu muttered.

"Like, more crabs than I've ever seen. I bet there are Klingons that don't have that many crabs."

Sulu resolutely shut his mouth and tried to block out Jim's acerbic commentary. Standard Jim Kirk operating procedure: unlike McCoy or Jensen, Jim would only talk for 30 seconds to two minutes after people stopped responding to him.

After a while Jim fell silent, as predicted. Twenty minutes later, Sulu had forgiven Jim just about every offence he'd committed that evening. At no small expense to himself, Jim had managed to procure an obscure snackfood for no other apparent reason than to make Sulu feel better (and Sulu wasn't even ready to approach the fact that Jim must have planned for the eventuality at least weeks ahead of time). Furthermore, he was spending his night keeping Sulu company, and doing it from Sulu's _lap_.

Once Jim had stopped bouncing around and drumming his heels lazily against the side of the chair, he turned into a dog-- the rust-coated sweet-eyed mongrel Sulu had once owned on Earth, to be exact, which had crawled into bed with him every night of his childhood even after her joints were so arthritic that she could barely hobble out onto the porch every morning. Sulu realised maybe five minutes later that the trembling fingers of his right hand were carding absently through the curling coarse strands on the nape of Jim's neck, but Jim hadn't said anything so he didn't bother to stop. If anything, Jim continued to melt lazier and more relaxed into Sulu's lap.

Over the vid's soundtrack, Sulu could hear Jim's slow, even breathing, his jacket whispering just slightly as his narrow chest rose and fell. Sulu still couldn't stop shaking, couldn't thaw the pit of nauseous ice in his stomach, but beneath the warm heaviness of Jim's body he started to feel... safer. As though the little voice still screaming in the back of his head had been mitigated with padded shackles holding him down so that no amount of spastic anxiety or outright craziness could do any damage, so he was safe, safe to stop worrying so hard that his clenching jaw ached.

Back where Sulu had grown up on Earth they wouldn't even be casual pals, Sulu reflected, let alone friends-or-something that watched nostalgia vids sprawled across each other in the same chair. Age differences really only stopped mattering after both people were over twenty-five or so, and Sulu had three years on Jim. A nineteen year-old version of himself that still somehow lived on Earth wouldn't have a thing to do with sixteen year-old Jim Kirk (if Jim could possibly _ever_ set foot on the planet, that was). But space made people crazy, fucked them up, and locked them together in an airtight sardine can with the choice to either get along or kill each other. Between Jim and Uhura, Sulu would take the one who _wasn't_ former Fleet, thanks. Next after Jim was a twelve year age gap to McCoy, which... no.

So Jim it was. All noise and smouldering anger and fucking psychotic episodes of genius, Jim was everything Sulu should have been put off by, everything that had been trained out of him. Sulu was quiet and self-restrained and did his job with the steady consistency that came from eleven years of monastic life. Somewhere along the line to learning Zen meditation and becoming the youngest _Sōhei_ in Fenniksu, a man learned self-control. That was something that Jim utterly lacked. It rankled Sulu to no end, and yet he knew that it was just... Jim. Sulu had a vague idea that the day Jim ever stopped acting on impulse would be the day he lost the spark that made him brilliant.

_The brightest fires burn fastest_.

Currently, however, Jim was just a warm, friendly body curled up on Sulu's lap. A friendly body with knives sheathed in both of his boots, perhaps, but then, so was Sulu. Some people liked that in a guy. Having a pal with concealed weapons was like having the biggest, scariest weapon in the bar: comforting. And Sulu's sword was pretty fucking big.

And Jim was being especially awesome just then. With the sitting, and the quiet, and doing both at the same time...

"Sulu. Guy."

Sulu restrained the urge to smack Jim upside the head only because he knew Jim would break his nose in about two seconds without even meaning to. Then he'd probably break something else, and _actually_ mean to. Helmsman McKenna still had a bruise that McCoy had refused to get rid of from the time McKenna had snuck up on Jim from behind and tried to put him in a headlock. Jim had caused internal bleeding to McKenna's spleen.

Sulu had privately thought that Jim could have just as easily caused external bleeding to McKenna's guts all over the deck with a swipe of one very sharp knife, but that wasn't the kind of thing a man should say to his closest co-worker, whether or not said co-worker was an idiot.

Sulu sighed. "You're so much more attractive when your mouth is shut."

"It's the swords."

"What?"

"They've all got their swords out, guy."

"...I can see that, Jim

"Oh. I thought you were asleep. You stopped bitching at me."

"I was enjoying the silence."

"Shit, Sulu! Shut up and enjoy your damn swords!"

"Somehow that strikes me as distinctly unfair."

"I thought you liked the swords."

"I do like the-- _Jim_. That was the best line of the _entire vid_. Run it back."

Jim snorted and started to get up, managing to jab an elbow into Sulu's stomach. "Oh, well, if everything's downhill from here then we can shut it off now."

Annoyed, Sulu wrapped an arm around Jim's waist and yanked him back down without an ounce of mercy or patience. It was only when Jim's elbow slammed into Sulu's ribcage so hard he saw stars that Sulu realised he had grabbed Jim far, far too tightly.

Jolted, Sulu lashed out without thinking. When his vision had cleared, Jim was sprawled on the deck in front of the command chair with a hand over his mouth, blood leaking out from beneath it.

"You _asshole_," Jim said, his tone one of wonderment.

"This is why I don't like people _sitting on me_," Sulu growled. He noticed a set of deep purple nail marks dug into his wrist where Jim had tried to rip his arm away and glared.

Gasping for breath, Jim glowered back. "Don't fucking _yank_ me."

"Don't sit on me then. _Fuck_, Jim, I have fifteen _years_ of combat training! What did you _think_ I would do if you kept picking away at me?"

Not expecting a reply and suddenly exhausted of furious energy, Sulu slumped back into the chair. His entire body had started trembling all over again, violent and uncontrollable. A wave of dizziness swamped him. He squeezed his good eye closed, humiliated but sure he would be sick if he tried to stand up and leave. Barely able to swallow past the lump in his throat, Sulu pulled his feet up onto the chair and wrapped an arm around his knees, clutching them tight to his chest.

"Sulu. I'm touching your face."

"Fuck off," Sulu bit out raggedly. He flinched back from the fingertips that came into contact with his right temple, but Jim's warning was enough to prevent him from striking out again.

"Putting my other hand on your left shoulder."

Sulu's muscles were starting to cramp from the force of their spasms. Jim's fingers curled around the clenched bulk of Sulu's left deltoid, blunt points of pressure digging deep that felt like anchors through the floating dizziness. Something was coming loose behind Sulu's eyes, drifting free of his convulsing body, and he didn't like it but couldn't _help_ it. Wasn't he supposed to be better than that? _Kunren! Chikura! Jisei_! But he was still fucking _shivering_, his teeth jarring together so hard that white shocks of pain rattled through his pounding skull.

Distantly, he heard Jim talking, still holding tight to Sulu's shoulder, petting the unbandaged side of his face. Then something exploded nearby. It must have been the vid, but the thump of cannon fire and cracking wood made Sulu flinch violently.

Jim swore. The next moment he was climbing into the chair with Sulu, accidentally shoving Sulu's knees up against his chin and tangling their legs together. Half crushed against the arm rest, Sulu wheezed for air. Jim shoved Sulu's arms away and forced his knees down. Startled by the sudden loss of protection, Sulu started to struggle. He was still in possession of enough of his mind not to hit Jim too hard, but it was a near thing, and Sulu knew that he was going to lose control if the panic in his chest kept growing. He tried to tell Jim that-- to yell at him, to curse at the stupid kid-- and all that came out was a hoarse choking sound, broken through his chattering teeth.

"Sulu-- Sulu, _breathe_\-- c'mon-- Sulu--"

Jim's arms slid around his chest and tightened, dragging Sulu close. Relieved by the weight pinning him, Sulu gave a dry sob, pressing his face into the bony jut of Jim's shoulder until white lights popped behind his eyes. Against the hard weight of Jim's body, he could feel how badly he was shaking in comparison. His head still floating somewhere beyond his body, Sulu gripped the leather of Jim's jacket in white-knuckled fists and let Jim hold him.

"C'mon Sulu, breathe, it's okay, s'okay-- Sulu, Sulu, s'okay, guy, c'mon, breathe--"

"S-stop s-s-saying my n-n-n-na-ame," Sulu managed to choke, his voice fluctuating wildly.

"Easy. Easy. Breathe with me. C'mon." His tone somewhere between gruff and more tender than Sulu had even thought Jim capable of, Jim kept murmuring nonsense into Sulu's ear, breath warm and wet against his neck.

Slowly starting to come back to himself, Sulu realised that the weight pressing down on him was Jim, straddling his lap with a knee on either side of his hips. Both of Sulu's ankles were twisted at painful angles against one arm rest. Scrunched up in the chair as they were, Jim's left boot was crushed into his right thigh and Sulu's knees were jamming into Jim's back with what had to be painful pressure, but Jim gave no sign of letting him go and so Sulu kept clinging. Belatedly, he realised that Jim was rocking him back and forth gently, but felt more sick from the trembling than from being held like a small child.

"Sulu. Look at me. Look at-- c'mon, guy, look at me." Jim's fingers pried under his chin. Sulu tried to fight them momentarily, but Jim forced his face up. Sulu felt his pupils contract painfully at the light of the vid still playing on the viewscreen. Jim's face was very close, no more than ten centimetres away. From such close range, Sulu could see all of the hair-fine lines etched prematurely around Jim's eyes and the dark scabs on his lips, two of them freshly split open and swollen anew by Sulu's fist.

"J-J-J--"

"It's okay. Look at the screen, Sulu."

"I-I c-c--

The muscles of his neck were knotted, seized tight, and Sulu couldn't make his head turn. Jim's hands cupped his trembling jaw, held it firm. Sulu tried to clench his teeth shut and his entire upper body started to jerk from the force of the restrained shaking. It was Jim who finally turned his head, forcing Sulu to lay his cheek on Jim's other shoulder. Through his single blurry eye Sulu could barely make out the viewscreen.

"J-Jim--"

"Watch. It's okay. Just watch the vid, Sulu. Watch-- watch your damn vid, I got you. That's it. Just focus on that. I got you."

Sulu made a pathetic snuffling sound and drew a deep, shuddering breath. Unable to hold his jaw any longer, he had to let his teeth start chattering again. Jim kept rocking him in place, fingers spread wide over his shoulder blades.

Focusing on the screen made his single eye ache with strain, but it helped Sulu come back to himself. He watched with single-minded determination, as though he had never seen the film once, let alone eight times before. Jim stroked his hair, fingers playing over Sulu's ears and down his neck, kneading the knotted muscle of his shoulders and back, counting the vertebrae of his spine. Sulu allowed it to continue, sitting in a kind of numb daze.

Slowly, slowly, Sulu's body unclenched. As his breathing returned to normal, the stitch of oxygen-deprivation in his chest made Sulu wonder just how long he had been hyperventilating for. He could go literally for hours at a steady jog and run a four minute mile without breaking a sweat.

The trembling had all but stopped. Neither of them said anything, or offered to let go. Jim just gradually shifted until he was sprawled out more comfortably against Sulu's chest rather than holding him up. Sulu leaned back against the arm rest and didn't complain. Jim's head was tucked under his chin, and his hair was kind of soft and kind of ticklish, and he smelled like the chemical pseudo-sandalwood scent of the anti-pest soap McCoy made them use after ever away mission.

"Guy," Jim whispered at long last. "This vid is so _old_. It's _two-dee_."

The startled laugh that barked out of Sulu's chest shocked them both. Both incredulous and fantastically relieved that Jim wasn't trying to talk about his breakdown, Sulu made himself say with some shaky pretence of normality, "You know the best vid in the world was filmed in black and white."

Jim grunted. "Best vid on _Earth_, maybe. _D'shaam va Ka'tur_, motherfucker."

"That vid was terrible."

"_This_ vid is terrible. Sulu, what the fuck. You know they've remade this entire series at least twice? Look at-- look at the graphics right there! That's _ancient_!"

Sulu scoffed what his sister had always called his 'holier than thou' laugh, which, taken literally, meant nothing to kids from a family of atheistic Zen practitioners. She'd been-- she _was_ a language geek, though, forever holding her linguistic superiority over Sulu's head and throwing English phrases into conversations that absolutely did not call for them. _English_\-- it wasn't even actively spoken outside of Fenniksu, let alone _inside_ the colony!

"No, see-- what are you talking about, the tentacles? The tentacles look fine. See that guy, Jim? Right there?" Sulu pointed his finger at the screen and shook it a couple times. "That actor is the reason all the remakes blow. Because he's dead, Jim. Dead."

Jim's open palm slapped his shoulder. "Well otherwise he'd be a three hundred year-old fuck, god. Of course he's dead."

"Stop saying 'god'. Nobody says 'god'. Only people like McCoy say that, savvy?"

With a huff of disbelief, Jim sat up straight on Sulu's lap to stare down at him. His upper lip was curled in a sneer, pulling at the scabs. "Oh my _god_, Sulu, how are you _real_? How the fuck could anybody ever think you're actually _badass_? You-- you like physics and botany and-- and geeky old lameass two-dee vids. You are such a _losser_."

Scoffing, Sulu prodded Jim's chest with a forefinger, right over the solar plexus that it would take him .66 seconds and a single thumb to cripple. "One, it's _loser_. Two, I have a sword, asshat."

Jim shoved his finger away, throwing out a hand to gesture wildly at the viewscreen. "_He_'s got a sword and that doesn't make him a pirate. _I'm_ a pirate."

"So am I, you dumbass."

"You are not. You're a fucking ninja, Sulu. Get it straight. And a fucking lame one, at that."

Sulu saw Jim's chest muscles flicker and clench long before Jim reached for him. Well prepared for the lunge, Sulu sat up abruptly, disrupting it. Jim reeled and fell backwards in the chair, slamming his back against one of Sulu's bent kneecaps. Hissing, Jim reached for Sulu's head again. The windmill of his arms was so wide, so comically ineffectual, that Sulu knew perfectly well that Jim was joking-- and, furthermore, Jim struck only from Sulu's right side, even though it meant he had to swing his arm past the back of the chair. Sulu's left side, his blind side, was left completely alone. For people like them, it was as far from actual fighting as it could be.

"I," said Sulu breathlessly, holding both of Jim's wrists tightly together and straining with his abdomen to hold Jim back, "am a ninja by training and a pirate by occupation. I'm _both_, motherfucker. Suck on that."

Jim leered down at him. "Don't tell me you're after my _booty_, Sulu."

To punctuate his point, he ground his ass down against Sulu's hips. Sulu ground his teeth and groaned. When he snapped his hips up hard against Jim, Jim's entire body jolted. Blue eyes went narrow, the long fringe of Jim's lashes coming down to a faux-coy half mast that Sulu had seen employed on pretty people from Andor to Vulcan. It didn't work on him. He wanted to fuck with Jim no matter what, take or leave the bedroom eyes.

"For your sake, I'm going to pretend you didn't actually say that," Sulu told him, as calmly as only a Zen master could in such a situation. (Because _wow_, how embarrassing for something like _that_ to come out of your mouth.) "And then I'm going to let go of your hands, and you're going to take off your clothes."

He didn't give Jim a chance to reply before following through. It didn't matter; Jim's was reaching for his lapels before Sulu even released him. The jacket flew off into the darkness somewhere behind the chair, baring lean shoulders and arms shining with sweat that had gathered beneath the well-insulated leather. Every inch of bare skin glistened wetly in the light from the viewscreen and the forgotten vid. Jim's recent insistence on wearing Pike's coat at all times was at least half the reason he stunk so bad. At the moment, Sulu gave less than a shit about a bit of body odour, mostly because Jim arched his back and _whined_ when Sulu leaned up to lick a long stripe of the perspiration gleaming on Jim's collarbones. His sweat-damp tank top stretched easily in Sulu's fists.

There was nothing contrived about the appreciation and want in Jim's eyes as he looked down at Sulu. During their struggle, Sulu's shirt had ridden up, baring his sinewy stomach and the line of coarse hair low on his belly.

"That," Jim purred, crooking a finger at him. "Off."

"You just gestured at all of me," Sulu sniped. He tugged Jim forward by a double fistful of his tank top. "_This_\-- off, or I take a knife to it."

"Kinky." Jim's eyes flashed real danger. "Don't even fucking try it."

They busied themselves with their clothes before the tense moment could settle. Trying to remove his shirt, Sulu nearly tipped Jim right off the chair. As he pulled free of the shirt, he caught only the barest glimpse of one of Jim's hands flashing through the air near his head in the dark-- and restrained himself just in time to keep from dislocating Jim's jaw.

The blade of his hand hovering centimetres from Jim's jaw, Sulu sat frozen and trembling. Jim stared, rigid with his own barely leashed reflex.

"Gonna kiss you," Jim warned, heartbeats before his lips collided with Sulu's. Sulu, for his part, made an embarrassingly needy noise in the back of his throat and took a fist full of Jim's hair to pull him closer. Their teeth grated together painfully. Sulu felt the hard scabs on Jim's lips scraping against his own, tasted iron from Jim's broken gums as he ran his tongue around the inside of Jim's teeth.

And Jim-- Jim had had the presence of mind to tilt left so that his nose wouldn't mash into the injured side of Sulu's face.

"I'm a pirate," Jim asserted breathlessly when they parted, his mouth swollen and shiny with spit. "S'why I'm plundering you, see."

"Fucking stand up," Sulu muttered. "Get-- boots--"

"You're worried about my boots?"

"Boots before pants, dumbass."

Clothes hit the deck with a wanton lack of attention that Sulu just _knew_ was going to cause them grief when they had to get dressed again in the gamma shift darkness. With Sulu's luck, he'd probably not be able to find his underwear and then alpha shift would find it draped over a light fixture or somewhere equally horrible. And it would be Jim's fault. Whenever Sulu committed stupidity of that calibre, it always was.

Jim slithered back into his lap, naked and hungry, and holy _shit_, Sulu was not ready for that. Not even. Jim Kirk without clothing was not like other people without clothing-- as Sulu struggled to breathe through the messy, voracious kiss devouring his mental processes and possibly his soul, all he could come up with was that Jim somehow got _fiercer_ when he took off his clothes. He fought uglier, using his nails on Sulu's shoulders, using the painful clamp of his scrawny corded-steel thighs to immobilise Sulu's hips. He didn't let up for a second, didn't give Sulu a moment to catch his breath or gather his thoughts, let alone do anything back to Jim. Like he was angry.

No. When Jim was angry, Jim broke shit. End of story. And it wasn't anger making Jim flinch like that when Sulu played a scale on the ribs of his back, counted with his fingertips the numerous welts of scar tissue that glowed too shiny and white in the flickering light of the viewscreen. He was...

Scared.

_Makes two of us_, Sulu thought, a little hysterically. His hands were still fucking _shaking_. In the whirlwind of sensation indunating his brain, all Sulu could conclude was that he had somehow managed to scare James T But Really M For Motherfucking Kirk and Captain Pike was going to _kill_ him.

_Think_, Sulu ordered himself, and in his mind the order was given in his judo master's nasal bark. _We're kissing. We're going to-- we fucking better be about to have sex. Why would he be scared_?

The penny dropped just as Jim grabbed the hand that Sulu had been sliding down his spine and yanked it away with a wild, shuddering, horrible facsimile of a laugh. His eyes were practically feral.

_Sex. Fear. Even with me? Afraid of being touched naked. Last year-- the months he spent in jail on Mufar-- and when we tracked him down, Pike brought him back _wrecked_. The bones in his wrists-- all the bruises-- no skin left on his knuckles. Cracked femur. Fractured rib. He wasn't fucking _talking_, Sulu, you idiot, how could you not_\--?

But Jim wasn't trying to push him away. If anything, he was grinding as close to Sulu as possible, shoving him down, holding him still to better savage him. Jim was very definitely hard, his cock pushing hot and heavy against Sulu's stomach. Despite being scared out of his wits, he was on top, panting and seething for control, for stimulation, for _more_.

Sulu wasn't Jim's kind of genius at tactical warfare or strategic maneuvering. There were times that he couldn't come up with a plan to save his life, and so he never bet his life on that eventuality. He couldn't always see through deception or manipulate a person's own emotions against themselves. All Sulu had, and had ever had, that he could rely on 100% of the time was himself. His body, and what he could do with it.

"Jim, fuck," he gasped, collapsing back against the arm rest as if unable to support himself. "I need you to fuck me. I need it, I need-- _now_, Jim, dammit."

He couldn't ease Jim through whatever trauma had left blisters across his psyche. Wouldn't even try to approach it. But he _could_ give Jim the position and the control he needed, the chance to take whatever he wanted that Sulu had to give... the reprive of a night's grace before Jim would have to deal with his issues, if only even just one.

Against Sulu's neck, Jim made a sound that, in another situation, would have frightened Sulu deeply. It was a moan and a whine and a whimper, a little pathetic noise that told Sulu just how relieved Jim really was right before Jim pulled himself together and shoved off Sulu's lap. Yanked to his feet, Sulu went willingly, and let Jim spin him around.

When Jim sank back into the chair, sprawled back in it like an emperor with his legs spread and his cock unashamedly standing right up, he was wearing the same dangerous, seriously-fuck-your-shit-up grin that was on his face when he held the bridge during stalemates and dogfights with other ships. In bars, it made people want to back the fuck away from him. At the moment, it mostly just made Sulu's knees weak with relief.

So Jim wasn't _completely_ messed up, then. He could still handle himself fine most of the time, hopefully. He was still _Jim_, just with a few more triggers that set him off. And those were somebody else's goddamn problem.

"Come here," Jim breathed, pulling at Sulu's wrist. Sulu was already climbing on top of him, knees to either side of Jim's thighs. His trepidation about Jim's reaction to being trapped beneath somebody lasted only as long as it took Jim to grab Sulu's ass and grope it hard enough to leave bruises. Sulu clenched his buttocks, raising his eyebrows in challenge, but Jim's grin only widened when he discovered he could barely squeeze a dent into Sulu's flexed muscles. The tip of Jim's cock bumped against his stomach, leaving a smear of fluid, and for a second it almost started to feel like Sulu was trembling-tense from lust instead of just being fucked up.

"I can't believe I'm letting you fuck me in the command chair," Sulu muttered.

"Doesn't everybody want a turn in the big seat?" asked Jim, palming Sulu's cock. Biting the inside of his lip, Sulu returned the favour. The shake of his hand absolutely wrecked his stroke, but Jim didn't mention it.

"This is Captain _Pike_'s chair," Sulu hissed, which completely didn't stop him from thrusting into the sweaty channel of Jim's hand a couple times.

Jim let out a loud groan of protest that was muffled against Sulu's left nipple. "I fucking _hate_ you," Jim growled. "Fuck, Sulu, I have your _dick _in my hand, I don't want to fucking hear about my _dad_."

"This was _your_ idea, you--"

"Do you _want_ me to put something in your mouth?" Jim demanded. "I don't have a problem with fucking your throat raw if that's what you want."

"_Jim_."

"Is it?"

Sulu glared. "Don't tell me you didn't bring protection and skin."

"Guy, we're both clean, or Bones would have our balls on a platter."

"_Fuck_, Jim," Sulu complained in outrage. "Castration is pretty damn high on _my_ list of things not to talk about during sex. Am I getting fucked properly or not?"

Jim didn't answer for a moment, his tongue darting out to lick his torn lips before he purred, "Nothing proper about the way I'm gonna fuck you." Sprawled back lazily in the chair with his fist around Sulu's cock and a sheen of sweat glowing on every inch of his scarred, tattooed skin, he was an intoxicating combination of obscene and broken. It promised that Jim would fuck exactly the way Sulu liked it, sweet enough to make sure Sulu enjoyed himself and rough enough to leave no delusions of love.

Jim grinned widely in response to Sulu's piercing glare. Sulu was deeply tempted to punch the expression off his pretty face, but settled for deepening his scowl. Hot pain shot across Sulu's cheek as the expression pulled at his damaged skin, reminding him just how unlikely it would be that he could pull off a 'pretty face' ever again.

A flicker of discomfort must have shown on his face, because Jim's smile faded. When Jim tried to reach up and touch his cheek, Sulu jerked his head away. "Skin," he demanded, trying to ignore the lump threatening to push back into his throat.

"Pants," Jim said, gesturing at the floor right next to the chair, and Sulu was horribly grateful that he hadn't tried to make any more comforting overtures. It was too dark for him to tell if there was pity in Jim's eyes.

If Jim's hand on his cock was a sympathetic gesture, however, then it was about the only one Sulu was willing to accept. The tip of Jim's thumb started playing with his slit, spreading around the fluid pearling out, and Sulu groaned. Skin-- handjob-- how to get both at the same time?

There were two times that being a ninja was extra awesome. One was any time Klingons were involved, because starting a fight was how Klingons said hello and ending fights was Sulu's job-- and that was where Sulu's brain skittered away from that thought, trying hard not to remember what had lead to the eyepatch and half his face being laid wide open. The other time was when he was having sex.

"Guy, what're you-- _oh_ my fuck _yes_."

His calves clamped tight around Jim's thighs, Sulu bent his body back into an arch-- and kept on bending. The gaudily coloured flowers tattooed across his entire torso writhed as his muscles flexed. Above him, Jim made a strangled noise and gripped his cock a little harder.

Stretched easily into a long, lithe bow, Sulu felt about on the deck with his hands. He cast an upside down glance at the vid and watched the swordfight unfolding with absent interest. If Jim had thrown his pants farther than Sulu's arm reach, Sulu was going to fucking _murder_ him.

Jim ran a reverential palm up the bunched steel of Sulu's thighs, over his jutting hipbone and along the sinewy muscles in his abdomen, calluses igniting sparks where they dragged. Sulu wasn't quite sure whether Jim was admiring his build or his tattoos, but the garbled sounds of appreciation he was making were fine either way. Jim was just lucky Sulu wasn't ticklish.

Finally, Sulu found Jim's pants and the promised skin in one of the pockets, as well as not one but two nanos. Cocky little bastard. A little light-headed, Sulu hauled himself back upright with the skin and nanos in hand. Jim's eyes were a little glassy.

Trying not to think about how smirking pulled uncomfortably at the medifoil on his left cheek, Sulu asked, "Appreciate the view?"

"Give that," Jim ordered hoarsely. He jerked the skin packet from Sulu's hands and opened it shakily. Excess lube leaked onto his hands. Jim shivered when some dripped onto his stomach, the chill making his skin jump.

Needing something to do with his trembling hands as Jim smoothed the slippery silicon sheath onto his own first two fingers and thumb, Sulu took Jim's cock and gave it a few friendly strokes. Jim grunted and bit his shoulder appreciatively. Then Sulu tore open the nano, pushed Jim's foreskin down and expertly slid the nano over the head of Jim's erection. Forming a ring with his thumb and forefinger just below the flared glans, Sulu held the bottom of the nano in place until it had sealed. He repeated the actions with his own.

"Happy now?" Jim asked, his sheathed fingers sliding up and down Sulu's crack. His other hand rested high on Sulu's back, tracing the bumps of Sulu's spinal vertebrae.

Jim pushed _perfectly_ against his perineum and Sulu surged momentarily before subsiding back down, fighting a moan. "Not yet," he said, too breathlessly.

Jim snickered, circling Sulu's entrance with his fingertips. The motion was slow, but there was nothing lazy about it. Everywhere Jim touched tingled and burned, his fingers leaving trails of heat along Sulu's skin, and Sulu decided that it had been way too long since anybody had touched him. He was shaking again, violent whole-body spasms, but Jim made it easy to concentrate on the pleasure and try to pretend his entire body wasn't betraying him.

Growing more and more boneless the longer Jim teased his entrance, Sulu slumped forward and rested his forehead against the back of the chair, content to shudder and moan into Jim's ear as Jim slowly fucked him open. Jim was the kind of person who would _say_ something if he wanted reciprocation. Now and then he gave his cock or Jim's a couple strokes, but all in all Sulu was grateful that Jim had just slowed the fuck _down_. Otherwise, Sulu wouldn't have lasted two minutes and that wasn't the kind of first impression he wanted to make.

Two knuckles deep in Sulu, Jim spread his fingers as far as the lubricant skin would stretch. Sulu groaned at the wonderful burn of it.

"Fuck," he muttered. "Okay, now."

"You sure?" Jim murmured, lazy-smug in his power. He nuzzled Sulu's neck, teeth grazing the peony tattooed just below Sulu's ear. Before Sulu could reply, the tip of Jim's sheathed thumb was at his hole, nudging it, pushing in alongside his fingers. Due to the angle Jim couldn't even get his thumb in as far as the first knuckle, but the sweet white-edged pain had Sulu gasping for air.

Fighting the simultaneous urges to pull away and shove down harder, Sulu dug his nails deep into Jim's shoulders. "Now," he rasped. "Asshole." If Jim prepared him any better, Sulu wasn't going to feel a stretch when he got Jim's cock inside him.

Jim pulled his fingers out, stripped the skin off with a wet noise and threw it away into the darkness. With a half hysterical vision of Uhura finding the used skin flung across her console on alpha shift, Sulu clung to Jim's shoulders for balance. Skin sticking wetly to the seat, Jim shimmied down lower in the chair, positioning his hips below Sulu's. Jim had to support Sulu when his thighs were trembling too badly to lift himself onto Jim's cock.

"Sulu. You're--?"

"Fine," Sulu growled in embarrassment, and twisted a fistful of Jim's hair. "_Do _it. Never seen a pirate so afraid to plunder something."

Jim bit his throat but, contrary to everything Sulu had assumed, refused to be rushed. The head of Jim's cock pressed against him, blunt and hot. Sulu made no particular effort to accommodate it; his muscles were spasming too hard to relax. They both groaned in pleasure when Jim breached his entrance and started to slide in, hard and inexorable. Resisting the pressure of Jim's hand trying to slow him down, Sulu lowered himself until he was seated on the taut muscle of Jim's thighs, savouring the pleasure-pain that seared up into his body.

Buried fully in Sulu, Jim held still and let out a slow, ragged breath. His fingers flexed against Sulu's buttocks but he didn't try to move, didn't even make a noise of urgency or impatience. He just-- _waited_, looking up at Sulu with a grim light in his piercing blue eyes that made Sulu's insides twist. A sixteen year-old shouldn't _have_ patience like that. It was like Jim was searching for something, and it made Sulu start to feel that they were doing something other than fucking, like he had ended up in the middle of something important, and he couldn't _stand_ it.

Unable to meet Jim's eyes, Sulu ground out, "I take it hard," raising his hips again. "Try to keep up."

Jim's nails raked over his chest, searching out his nipples amid the swirls of brilliant colour and pinching them hard. "Suits me," he said glibly, without a trace of the intensity that was still in his eyes. "And for the record, _this_ is how I plunder things." He snapped his hips sharply up into Sulu's next drop, sending a flare of sensation up Sulu's spine. Sulu clutched Jim's shoulder, Jim's hands gripped his buttocks and they started to fuck in earnest.

The sex was sloppy and messy and rough, and neither of them even tried to make it anything but. Struggling to keep from leaving nail marks in the chair's upholstery, Sulu yanked Jim's hair and grabbed his shoulders, knowing damn well that he was leaving handprint-shaped bruises; his years of combat training could result in nothing less. Jim acted as if he was trying to claw the ink right off Sulu's back, scratching long, ragged trails down Sulu's back over and over again until Sulu's back and buttocks glowed with red heat.

Everything in Sulu's body was starting to burn-- his skin, his muscles, his lungs, his blood. It felt _good_, like all the nausea and sourness was being scoured out of him and left raw and clean, purged. Orgasm was catching up to him, building, stoked to a blaze by every scratch, every bite, every brutal thrust and accidental graze against his protate. Sulu barely noticed Jim grabbing his cock and jerking it furiously, more preoccupied by the fact that Jim's hips started pistoning up into him even faster as Jim got close to the edge.

He was fucked, he was used, he was _wrecked_ and falling apart, and suddenly he was coming, taken by surprise and shouting hoarsely as he shot his load with a force that made his vision darken. Sulu shuddered, cried out, and Jim's hand continued to stroke him without mercy until he had wrung Sulu dry.

Blowing like a winded horse, Sulu collapsed against Jim, burying his face in Jim's sweat-slick shoulder and clinging. Jim's hands tight on his hips felt like the only things keeping Sulu from flying apart. For an airless second Jim was absent, his face contorted with desperation and need as his hips jerked raggedly against Sulu, sawing for the last tantalising inch of stimulation, and then it was over and Jim was back with him, holding him down, keeping him together. The sweaty palms stroking over Sulu's back were cool in contrast to the heat radiating from his scratched skin.

Jim's lips nuzzled his ear. "Y'all right?" Jim asked, gruff-tender.

Sulu drew one deep breath and then another, trying to pick up the pieces of his mind from the dark unravelling place he had gone into. "Yeah," he managed at last. Everything else he could have said felt like an understatement. He could hardly even comprehend what Jim had just done to him, let alone how Jim had known to do it when _Sulu_ hadn't even known what he needed. "How... how did you..."

"People always tell you what they need, if you listen to them."

Sulu pulled back to stare at him.

Jim couldn't hold his expression and let out a snort of harsh laughter. "Bullshit, never mind. You just seemed like you really, really needed a good fuck. I mean, you're always all-- tense and quiet and _controlled_. Nobody can live like that all the time." His eyes were intense again, stripping Sulu bare. "It starts to make your skin itch, like you're trapped in your own body, and you get... twitchy. Restless. Start to feel like the inside of your own skull could make you go crazy. Things start building up on you. Every now and then, you _have_ to just... _let go_."

When Sulu opened his mouth, Jim tapped his cheek before he could say anything. "And you _know_ that's how it is, Sulu. Everybody else thinks you're perfect, but I know better. Some days you're going fucking _insane_ on the inside." Then Jim smiled too knowingly and ran his hands down Sulu's forearms. "You're not shaking any more."

Sulu looked down at himself, startled to find that Jim was right. To his surprise, the reminder of the trembling didn't bring it back. He didn't even feel the threat of nausea lurking in his stomach. Sulu was just... Sulu.

"I," was all he could say. "I guess."

He kind of didn't want to move, even though the sweat was drying and his ass was starting to stick to Jim's thighs, not to mention that the chair was going to get really, really uncomfortable when they had to peel themselves off it. Lube was leaking out of his swollen entrance and all the aches were setting in. There was a deep, raw soreness inside of Sulu that he didn't regret at all.

About to speak, "So--" was all Sulu got out before he was blinded by a sudden flare of bright light. He threw an arm over his eyes and whipped down behind the cover of the chair instantly. He and Jim both reached for their respective weapons out of instinct and found nothing but bare skin.

"_Dammit, Jim_!"

Jim stopped feeling around for his boot knife and guffawed right in Sulu's ear. He poked his head up above the back of the chair with a shit-eating grin that stretched from ear to ear. Embarrassed, Sulu made himself visible as well. _Please not Captain Pike please not Captain Pike please not_\--

Doctor McCoy was leaning heavily against the open door frame, his expression one of slightly deranged horror. "_Dammit_, Jim," he said again, outrage and fury warring in his tone. "_Tell_ me you weren't fuckin' doin' what I think you were doin'."

"Fucking in the captain's chair," Jim said cheerfully.

McCoy swore. "He _jus'_ got outta brain surgery!" he shouted, pointing a rigid finger at Sulu. The effect was somewhat spoiled by McCoy's drunken wobble and the slur in his voice.

"The surgery was two days ago, actually, and I was cleared for duty," Sulu piped up, not impolitely. "Did you need me for something, though?

The doctor glowered at him, looking as though he were having trouble focusing. "Your monitor was givin' me all sorts'a fucked up readin's an' I wanted to know what the _fuck_ you were _doin_'-- but never fuckin' _mind_, it's just Jim fuckin' _Kirk_, who _obviously_ knows better'n a man with three PhDs an' fifteen years'a medical 'sperience!"

With that, McCoy shoved off the door frame and stomped away. Sulu saw him stagger and have to catch the wall for balance just before the door whooshed shut and left the bridge in near darkness again.

"He swears a lot more when he's drunk," Sulu observed.

"Yeah. 'S Bones," said Jim, as though that explained everything.

Sulu remembered what he had been meaning to ask. "So... is this going to be a regular thing?" Not that he would mind if it was, but you couldn't just let James M Kirk run full steam ahead all over the place with whatever plans he had, because it went to his head _way_ too much. If he just let Jim do whatever he wanted, Sulu was sure that in about three months he'd find himself waking up handcuffed to his bunk with Jim's dirty socks all over his room and Jim writing Shakespeare on his stomach or something.

But Jim laughed and gave a tight-edged grin. "No. First one's free. After that, I don't fuck my crew."

Sulu didn't correct him with, 'Pike's crew.' Everybody tried not to think about it, because it almost definitely meant Pike's death, but it was pretty much a given that they were going to be Jim's crew on Jim's ship one day. Jim was just... _there_. Like a sun that had pushed its way into Sulu's life and usurped the focal point of his normal orbit.

"Then why... tonight?"

"You needed it," Jim said simply, then frowned. "What I don't get is why you were freaking out like that. It's not the first time you've killed somebody."

Sulu had to take a deep breath. "First time somebody's almost killed me."

"Ah." Jim's frown softened, and when he reached up again to touch the medifoil taped across Sulu's gouged cheekbone, Sulu let him. Even through the foil, Sulu's newly regenerated nerves were tender and sensitive enough to feel the heat of Jim's fingertips like coals. He held still and held his breath, and inside his chest the cool familiar well of patience lay without a ripple.

Then Jim pulled back and Sulu knew it was over. All the broken beautiful bits of sensuous Jim were out of his reach for good.

"I heard you brought back the bastard's _bat'leth_," Jim was saying, talking about things that didn't matter and grinning wicked-immature like he did to everybody, nothing special or private about it. "I didn't get a good look at it, though."

"I'll show you," Sulu said as he matter-of-factly peeled himself off Jim and got to his feet. "I'm thinking of hanging it on my wall, but I'm not sure whether to put it next to my good katana or across from the bed. It might make a good rack to hang a couple ferns from, too, you know?"

Jim was Jim and Sulu was Sulu, and it didn't hurt. Somewhere out there was somebody who could fix Jim, could equal him and keep up with him and burn as bright and fast as him, but Sulu was not that person and he knew it. He just hoped Jim found that person soon.

He didn't want to see what it would be like when a star as huge as Jim burned out.


End file.
